MicrobiologistJohn F. Alderete, Ph.D. is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he has received over $12 million in research support and over $3 million to support minority organizations and activities.
Dr. Alderete was born in Las Vegas, N.M. in 1950. As an undergraduate student at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology at Socorro, he received two B.S. degrees (mathematics and biology). His first and second publications were completed while an undergraduate working on the African sleeping sickness parasite, Trypanosoma brucei brucei with Dr. Gilbert Sanchez at New Mexico Tech, and as a student intern working with Dr. Tom H. Wilson at the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School, respectively. In 1978, he received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the U. Kansas-Lawrence.
He completed postdoctoral work at UNC-Chapel Hill prior to taking a faculty position at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. He was director of two training grants from NIAID/NIH. Dr. Alderete has published over 120 publications in peer-review journals and is the author of 31 book chapters and invited OP-ED editorials. His research on sexually transmitted diseases and on the number one, non-viral sexually transmitted agent, Trichomonas vaginalis, has been presented as abstracts published in 125 proceedings of national and international scientific meetings, where he has also participated in, chaired, and organized scientific symposia.
His research has resulted in five patents and one patent-pending. His laboratory has submitted 23 sequences to the GenBank database and he has an exclusive license agreement between the Board of Regents of UT and Xenotope Diagnostics, Inc. He has been a member of study sections and panels for NIH institutes, the NSF, USDA and other government agencies and is currently a member of the National Advisory Research Council for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research/NIH.
Dr. Alderete served on a National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine panel to examine the Congressionally-mandated request on how NIH prioritizes its research and was the reviewer of two IOM panel reports. He serves on three editorial boards and has been an ad hoc reviewer of 32 scientific journals. He is asked to speak on issues involving minorities, higher education, and the scientific workforce by government agencies. These include the President's National Science Board, the NIH, the Federal FDA, the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and White House "One Nation" on race and health disparities. He was asked to moderate the session in October 1999, a Public Policy Forum on the "Digital Divide" as part of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In April 2000, he moderated a session at the Office of Research on Minority Health/NIH conference on health disparities in Washington, DC.
He has received many honors and awards, most notably the Premio Encuentro Award for Science and Technology in 1992, the single highest honor given to an Hispanic in America. He was elected into the honorific societies Sigma Xi and as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and in the fall of 2001 was honored at the National Atomic Museum in New Mexico. Also in 2002, the spring issue of Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology magazine honored Dr. Alderete for his efforts to bridge the "Digital Divide" for minorities, among other outreach activities. Hispanic Magazine selected him as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in America. More recently, he was honored by the American Society for Microbiology for this efforts involving minorities in science and was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology of ASM. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Mexico.
For more than ten years, he conducted a Saturday Morning Science Camp for minority students, parents and teachers, which was adopted by a community-based organization. He has mentored underrepresented minorities from undergraduate institutions and high schools as summer interns in his laboratory. He has given presentations throughout K-12 schools in the San Antonio and South Texas area.
Dr. Alderete is the past-president of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS). More recently, he is co-founder of a biotechnology company, Xenotope Diagnostics, Inc., a company that specializes in development of diagnostics for infectious diseases. The company is FDA-approved for two products for the diagnosis of STD vaginitis. His lateral flow, immune-chromatographic diagnostic is now being sold and marketed by Genzyme, Inc.
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